Sept. 4, 2014

Contact: David Wilcox <[log in to unmask]>
Read it online: http://bit.ly/1uBPJYE

Introducing Fedora 4.0 Beta 3

Winchester, MA DuraSpace and the Fedora community of users and developers are pleased to announce that the Fedora 4.0 platform is one step closer to a full production version of the software with the release of Fedora 4.0 Beta 3. The Fedora 4.0 feature setis available for testing with this release, including a human-readable file system export, clustering for high-availability use cases, and support for millions of objects. This release is part of a broad initiative to make significant changes to the robust Fedora framework for building digital repositories to serve the community for the next decade. 
Full release notes are available, and highlights include:

- Transparent JCR/XML file system export
- Clustering support for high-availability use cases 
- Demonstrated performance: 10 million objects via REST-API, 16 million via federation 
- Reviewed and published Fedora 4 RDF ontology
Download Fedora 4.3 Beta here.

Get in Here
We are making progress towards completing acceptance tests, but we still need to test the remaining features before we can release the production version of Fedora 4.0. Please take some time to install the Fedora 4.0 Beta(or just use the one-click-run application), test out some features, and submit your results.

Three Beta Pilot projectsare underway. These projects will test a number of Fedora 4.0 features in a production-like environment over the course of a few months. Each of these projects will be showcased in a short webinar series this Fall - details will be available soon. 

Beta Pilot Projects represent a larger commitment of time and resources than acceptance tests, but they also present an opportunity to test real institutional use cases with Fedora 4.0, with added support from DuraSpace and the Fedora community. If your institution is interested in participating, please contact David Wilcox <[log in to unmask]>.

How Does DuraSpace Help?
DuraSpace works collaboratively with organizations that use Fedora to advance the design, development and sustainability of the project. As a non-profit, DuraSpace provides business support services that include technical leadership, sustainability planning, fundraising, community development, marketing and communications, collaborations and strategic partnerships and administration.

About Fedora
Fedora is an open source project that provides flexible, extensible and durable digital object management services. First released in 2004, it has hundreds of adopters worldwide, with deep roots in the research, scientific, intellectual and cultural heritage communities. See http://fedora-commons.org/for more information. It is supported by its community of users, and stewarded by DuraSpace.